Goooooodbye MSH

[crickr1]

almost 3 years, hundreds of flights and no crashes that weren't my fault!
Granted, not in dry climate, but I do keep belt lubed . Static has never been issue.
Just fly the crap out of it

[Carpetbombing]

A'ight. I've read up enough to know what the fixes are, and I completely understand the physics at play, it just seems like a glaring deficiency in an otherwise stellar design. ANY design shortcoming that can literally just drop your heli out of the sky inert is a big one. Risk is a function of severity of outcome X likelihood of outcome. A catastrophic static hit may not be likely, but it'd be bad. Minnesota can get REALLY static-y in the winter. I'll take some basic grounding precautions, fly it and not worry about it. I'll report back if I ever have voodoo electronics problems. I will say - I'd never seen one of these in person and bought a used one because I wanted to try something different that used the Trex 500 2600 6s batteries that I already have. This is an AMAZING design. Won't be ready to re-maiden it for a while, but this thing is incredibly elegant. I LIKE my FBL Trex 500 a lot, but I think I'm going to like this better. Thanks all for the reassurance r.e. the static.

[mike d1]

For me its odd that this issue is being talked about right now. Just today after zero changes to my stretch protos I saw a strange twitch the heli made when I was bringing it down for a landing. It was nothing big just a little twitch, but if nothing else I have learned to watch these helis very closely at all times and don't ignore anything out of the ordinary. So after spool down I didn't even unplug the battery, I carried it straight into the house and plugged the mini vbar into my laptop to check the flight log. Sure enough at exactly when I saw the twitch in fight it was recorded in the vbar log as a input channel missed warning on an otherwise warning free log. It honestly didn't concern me too much as it was only one single entry, plus the receiver sat combo was not blinking upon landing and I never lost any control of the heli at any time.... but I was now aware of it. So I charged up another battery and flew it again. It flew perfect and I visually noticed nothing wrong in the air or in the way it flew. I still wanted to see what was happening with the log though so back to the laptop we went. I wish I could say it was good news but it was not. The log was full of missed channel warnings ,enough for me to ground it till I get it sorted.

My first thought was to check all the wiring to the sat and the receiver. All is good here, the sat cable is almost new. I also checked all the wiring to just make sure there were no servo, esc, or any wire that had been rubbed causing issues. The wiring is sound. I am now heavily leaning on static causing this. I do not lube my belts and have never grounded anything on it, but this is the first time this heli has seen winter, or at least the beginning of it, ...so I really think this out of the blue problem is a static issue. My plan is to ground the boom, frame and motor mount all to the battery, fly it again and see if my suspicions are correct before I start swapping out sats, receivers and the like. I will post here with my results in the next day or two.

Mike

[kayakboy69]

Watch ur bearings I had/have issues there super smooth when all is well up one little hick up and a small wiggle. Showed in tail ... I swapped belts and added aluminum pulleys plastic ones get flat spotted and cause vibration

[crickr1]

Originally Posted by kayakboy69

Watch ur bearings I had/have issues there super smooth when all is well up one little hick up and a small wiggle. Showed in tail ... I swapped belts and added aluminum pulleys plastic ones get flat spotted and cause vibration

+1 on aluminum pulleys/bearings. I also keep belt well lubed and never had an issue with static, unidentifiable glitch. BTW no sats either, not sure if that is a factor or not but my Futaba system has been flawless for years. Other then a worn batt connector, any problems have been either pilot error or mechanical/bearing related.

[alexf1852]

If you want to eliminate static hits for good, ensure continuity from tail case to frame (plastic composite or CF) via conductive tail boom block and tail case. Once that is ensured, take a 1Kohm, 2W resistor and solder wires at each end. Connect to one end a fork wire connector. And hook that connector to one of the screws that holds the front landing gear. The other end of the wire connectors to battery negative. Never had a problem since regardless of how dry it was. The resistor is not required but provides protection in case your positive battery cable somehow gets its insulation cut and the bare wire makes contact with the frame. I don't use belt lube.

[mike d1]

Thanks for the suggestions gents.

I finally got some time to goof with my protos this afternoon and the first thing I did was test my radio flying another heli, took it in to read the vbar log and all was well. So I did then ground the boom to the frame and took the Protos back out for another flight, three to be exact ( I am lucky enough to literally fly almost right out my backdoor in a ag field adjacent to my house) all three vbar logs were spotless. For some reason I was not surprised. I still haven't ground it all like I want to, but I will get it done when I have a little more time.

Mike